Acclaimed guitarist Robben Ford has an affinity with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band of the mid-1960s that featured the duo guitar lineup of Elvin Bishop and Mike Bloomfield. I can relate to that.

That was one of Ford’s earliest influences and he has kept that foundation of blues and blues-rock alive in his music, combining it with jazz sensibilities to form his own brand of fusion. Throughout his career, he’s played with many diverse, high-caliber musicians from Joni Mitchell to Miles Davis, and Ford’s varied skills have been consistently on display as a solo performer since the late 1980s.

At the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut Sunday night he devoted a large portion of his approximately 80-minute set to his latest album Soul On Ten, released last week. All but three of the album’s 10 tracks were recorded live at The Independent in San Francisco. The rest were recorded live in the studio.

Ford, a multiple Grammy winner in the blues genre, is a virtuoso who has embraced recording his latest offering live with no overdubs because he and his band are fully capable of producing perfectly executed tracks in a single take that capture the spirit and feel of a live performance, something that is so often lacking in layered studio recordings.

Sunday, Ford played with the extraordinarily skilled and funky drummer Toss Panos, who took an extended solo to start one of the last numbers in the set, and bassist Andy Hess, who also soloed to good effect early in the night. Ford plays a Telecaster for the most part and he coaxes an array of sounds from ultra-clean for his complex jazz chording to a biting, beefy tone in his more bluesy solos, such as his take on Spoonful, which had a much more upbeat shuffle feel than the classic Cream arrangement. Actually, it hearkened back to Muddy Waters’, Willie Dixon’s and later Butterfield’s version of the Dixon standard.

Ford’s soloing is a wonderful mix of blues and jazz, a unique and distinctive style. Each break Sunday night was inventive and compelling, and each elicited applause from the packed house. And his singing is well-suited to his material, not a gruff bluesy growl but a clear, smooth pitch-perfect voice that hints a little at his California background.

He included all 10 tracks from his latest album, including the rocking shuffle Please Set A Date, Nothin’ To Nobody, a funky number that included Hess’ solo, and the moderate tempo, jazz-flavored Earthquake, which featured a long solo in the best tradition of jazz fusion. Others from Soul On Ten included How Deep In The Blues (Do You Want To Go), Indianola, Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me and They’ll Never Be Another You. He also played two from his 2007 album Truth, Lateral Climb and the enchanting Moonchild Blues, underpinned by a moderate Latin rhythm and infused with a jazz-blues feel on top.

He closed the set with Supernatural, the opening tune from Soul On Ten, another funky outing that featured a wah-wah riff and solo and a tag solo with a ferocious tone with the wah set in one position, then returned to play another jazz-styled tune Thoughtless, the album’s closer.

When Ford and his band came back from their encore, he related a story about his first meeting with Les Paul, the guitar great and inventor who died Thursday at 94. He said he went to see Paul play four years ago at his traditional Monday night gig at the Iridium in New York and stood in line after the show for an autograph. When he reached Paul, he told him he was Robben Ford and Paul hugged him and said “Robben Ford, all right.”

As a result of the meeting, Ford was asked by Paul to play at a special concert to commemorate Paul’s 90th birthday. Ford said he intended to dedicate Sunday’s set to Les Paul and before his last tune of the night he did just that.

Below is a clip of Ford playing Supernatural at a date last year at a Jazz Festival in Leverkusener.